


drowning in time to a desperate beat

by flowersforgraves



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), Embedded Images, M/M, POV Second Person, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Touch-Starved, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-13 07:40:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20170609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersforgraves/pseuds/flowersforgraves
Summary: Tim's a ghost. It's really not a lot of fun.





	drowning in time to a desperate beat

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2019 Rusty Quill Big Bang.
> 
> See the lovely art by tanis-drawings-2point0 (and reblog it) [here](https://tanis-drawings-2point0.tumblr.com/post/186898438360/the-three-ilustrations-i-did-for-my-wonderful-big) on tumblr!

You wander into the Institute almost at random, except it’s not random at all. It’s honestly even odds whether you’re doing this of your own free will or not -- your cynicism tells you it’s just some mind games, but you’re a betting man on good days and a gambler on bad days, so you try to logic it out.

The sequence of events goes like this:

One: The Archivist asks for your contribution to stopping the Stranger ritual.

Two: You waltz right the fuck in -- it’s not even a pun, the fucking dancing sticks in your mind even if the music doesn’t -- with Daisy, Basira, and the Archivist.

Three: You detonate plastic explosive enough to blow the whole building to hell.

Number four is where it gets hazy. You’re dead. You should be dead, you want to be dead, you know it’s impossible for you to not be dead. But you’re conscious, and you’re walking around London like you’re still a person, and your feet take you to the Institute no matter how much you hate the place.

Maybe it’s habit. Maybe it’s just the monotony of going to work every fucking day for years, taking the same route at the same time and going to the same place. Or maybe it’s the Web, drawing you along like a puppet and letting you pretend it doesn’t have its claws in you. Or maybe there’s something Elias did, something that doesn’t let you go even in death. 

Whatever the reason, you wind up in the Institute, feet taking you to the archives. There’s a sick horror in your gut that coils and reaches out to try and choke you when you realize you aren’t objecting or fighting it. But you keep walking, past Elias’ office and past the library and past artefact storage and then --

And then you’re standing in front of Martin’s desk. You know it’s Martin’s because how could you not? How could you see the paperwork in all its organized chaos, the carefully kept files strewn about the floor, the endlessly-chewed-on pen caps, and not know it’s Martin’s? He’s not there, but you know his habits well. He’ll be back shortly, probably out to get another lukewarm cup of coffee that he hates but drinks anyway to look like he’s a nine-to-five office drudge and not something touched by evil.

You sit down in his chair. A quick scan of the paperwork gives you an interesting tidbit: Peter Lukas. As much as you hate Elias, having Peter Lukas heading up the Institute can’t be a good thing either. And Martin is the motherfucker’s personal assistant. 

A certain stack catches your eye. You grab a Sharpie from the pen holder and kick your feet up -- no point in keeping them off the desk. Martin might not even be able to tell. Sharpie in your mouth, you start flipping through the file. It’s full of statements, which isn’t unusual, but Jon’s neat handwriting labelled “LONELY” crossed out to have “TO SHRED” replace it is too much of a temptation. 

Martin comes back with a coffee in hand, as you’d suspected. It’s almost funny, when he sees you. He blinks and rubs his eyes, like he can’t believe he’s seeing you, and to be honest you can’t blame him. 

In fairness you didn’t expect him to be able to see you either. You hadn’t had to pay for a train ticket, nor had you been recognized on your way into the Institute despite passing people you considered friendly acquaintances. Maybe it’s something to do with Martin being touched, but he’s the first person who’s acknowledged your existence since the Unknowing.

“Planning to stand there all day?” you ask him. You turn a page in the file to emphasize how casual and cool you’re being about the whole thing, never mind the anxiety you hold in your shoulders and the voice in your head screaming that it’s dangerous to be seen.

“Tim?” Martin sounds very small. 

“Martin,” you reply. You’re not trying to mimic his tone, but -- you’re just as lost as he is, and the relief of speaking to someone is palpable. 

“You’re dead,” Martin tells you.

You bite back an instinctive snarl. “I know,” you say instead. “I set off that bomb. Stopped the ritual. I don’t -- I don’t remember much after that.” It’s an obvious lie; Martin doesn’t need to be touched by the Eye to know you’re not telling him the whole truth. 

Thankfully, Martin lets you have it. It’s easier on both of you if you don’t argue. But then he says, “What are you, Tim?”

You cough, and try again to keep your temper in check. “I don’t know,” you say as levelly as you can manage. Before you’ve consciously thought about it, you’re swinging your feet off his desk, standing up, taking the marker out of your mouth, moving to his side. “I don’t know, Martin, I don’t know anything more than I did when I was a person.”

He lets you hold his hand. “Why?” He’s looking at you with wide eyes, and you don’t like it at all.

“Why what?” you ask, raising an eyebrow. It’s a stall tactic, just to buy yourself a few more seconds to try to come up with literally anything to say.

“Why this?” Martin asks. “Why -- why now?”

This time you can’t keep the anger buried. “I don’t _know_,” you snap. “I don’t know, okay? Just --” and you’re turning his palm over, scribbling a statement number you don’t remember memorizing on his skin, “-- just be careful.”

And then you can’t stand to be here a second longer, you don’t want to look at the Institute or the archives or even Martin anymore, you just need to get _out_. You drop the pen, let go of his hand, take off down the hallway. Thankfully, Martin doesn’t follow you, and you get the fuck out of the Institute.

Your hands are shaking as you lean against the cool exterior of the Institute building. Your cheek rests against the rough-hewn stone, and you push against it as if you could tip the whole building over. But you’re just some guy -- maybe not even that, anymore, who knows what you are now that you’re a dead man walking -- and there’s no way to shift two centuries of evil with one good push.

You walk aimlessly for a while, but before long your feet start taking you with insistent direction to the hospital. Resisting isn’t going to help -- you eventually made your way to the Institute, even while actively trying to avoid it, so you figure you might as well just get it over with. You’ll have to confront the Jon issue eventually.

As it turns out, someone in a coma looks remarkably like someone laid out in a funeral casket. You almost lose your balance as vertigo overtakes you, overlapping Jon’s face (your boss your friend your coworker your partner your murderer) with Danny’s (your brother your best friend your idol your sun), with Sasha’s (your coworker your friend your drinking buddy your partner in crime), with every single other person you’ve ever seen dead or dying. Jon is so still you find yourself holding your breath to hear his faint exhales, just to make sure he’s not dead. He looks like hell, an unhealthy pallor to his skin and heavy bruising under his eyes. 

You sit down in the empty chair beside his bed and study his face. There’s a slight frown creasing his forehead, lips dry and chapped. Without thinking, you reach out and brush one finger over his mouth, gentle, just to see if you can.

Jon stirs. 

It’s hardly anything, just a twitch of one eyelid, but you’ve got your proof now. Jon is warm, and he’s alive, and he’s maybe going to come out of it in one piece.

Well. Not in one piece. Jon hasn’t been in one piece for a while now, might not be in one piece ever again. 

As much as you hated him becoming the Archivist, you never let yourself grieve for _Jon_. There hasn’t been time, with how caught up you were in hate and rage, but now you’ve got nothing but time to sit and watch Jon sleep a deathless sleep. Whether he wakes up as Jon or as something that used to be Jon is up for debate.

You don’t like the sadness slowly draining into your soul. You’ve been so angry for so long it’s become comfortable, like an old, worn pair of jeans. It’s become your state of rest, that bitterness and anger, smoldering warm in your chest. The sadness -- that’s more like water, like water left out for days and poured over the flickering embers. 

The worst part is that you don’t know who you are anymore without being angry. You’re at loose ends, and without a focal point for your anger it just dissolves. You’re pretty sure you used to have a personality, because there must have been something that let you and Jon hit it off, but damned if you know what it was.

(and the not knowing, the not understanding yourself, that just brings up not knowing Danny and not knowing Jon and not knowing Sasha and the whole Stranger business, and you can’t fall to the Stranger. you _can’t_.)

You must have spent a lot more time watching Jon than you thought, because when you look up at the sound of someone else entering the room, the light is dimming to evening and the person framed in the door is Martin. He freezes when he sees you, just like he had earlier, and you wonder whether you look as haggard as you feel.

“Hi, Tim,” he says. He sounds gentle, almost, but it’s a pitying gentle, like he thinks you’re somehow wracked with guilt over Jon’s condition.

“Off work already?” you ask. You’re trying for a hard edge on your tone, but you just sound _tired_. 

He nods. “Personal assistant has its perks.” This time, he’s the one to approach you, walking up to the side of Jon’s bed and putting his hand on the back of your chair. He’s not touching you, which is irrationally irritating and also stupid. 

You watch him for a moment. “You’re not over him,” you say, even though you already know it’s true. “Even like this, even when he’s not Jon.”

Martin turns his gaze away from Jon to glare at you. “He’s not a monster, Tim.”

“He will be,” you say, because making Martin angry at you is the only way you know how to interact now that you’re not a person anymore. It’s a bad idea, you know it’s a bad idea, but you say it anyway, because your life is over in a very literal sense and you have never felt more alone. Having Martin yell at you will help, you think. It’ll be grounding.

You get the satisfaction of watching him physically trying not to get angry, trying to take a step back, trying to hold himself back. For a moment, you think maybe you could -- should, even -- provoke him further. But as soon as the thought enters your head, Martin pulls himself together to say, “I read the statement.”

“What?” you ask, genuinely confused, before you remember the number you’d written on Martin’s palm. 

“This one,” he says, showing you your own handwriting on him. “I read it. It’s -- you’re an asshole, Tim, you know that?”

You just look at him, waiting. 

“Do you really think I’m in this for power?” he asks, voice shaking ever so slightly. “Because I’m not,” he continues before you can say anything. “I’m _not_.”

“Then what is it?” you ask. “Self-preservation? Money?” You can feel yourself getting hysterical. If Martin isn’t going to throw a punch, maybe you will, no matter how guilty you’ll feel afterward. “Immortality? To make Jon yours? Just to see if you can? To get your mother to see you again?” All the things you’re saying are unreasonable, out of character for Martin, but you’re throwing every weapon in your arsenal at him.

“Shut up, Tim!” he says, much louder. “Shut up, shut up, shut _up_!” He takes his volume down with a deep breath, and tells you, “Peter Lukas said he would make sure Jon and Basira and Daisy and Melanie didn’t -- the staff -- he said he’d protect them if I came to him and -- and did a ritual with him.”

You breathe out slowly, the wind taken out of your angry sails. “He’s lying,” you say helplessly. “You know he’s lying.”

He lifts his chin defiantly. “Not so far. The -- there was an attack. He stopped it.”

“Fuck,” you mutter, and then, more vehemently, “Fuck!”

It suddenly occurs to you that maybe the Unknowing succeeded. That maybe this is a post-ritual world. That maybe you’re in your own private little hell. “This is a dream,” you say. “This is a dream, it must be a dream…”

Martin frowns at you, switching from anger to concern like you’d flipped a switch. “Tim?” he asks carefully.

“This is a dream,” you tell him. “I’m dreaming and this isn’t real and I just haven’t died yet.”

His brow is furrowed, deep lines in his forehead as he says, “Tim, what are you talking about?”

You brush him aside. “You’re not real. I’m hallucinating you.” You stand up from the chair, pace back and forth. “The fucking Stranger ritual. It must be. I have to push the button. I have to detonate --”

Martin cuts you off by grabbing your arm. “Tim! You’re not dreaming! I’m real!”

“No, you’re not,” you insist, pulling away. “No, this is -- this is the Unknowing, it has to be. I can’t -- I’m being tricked. Trying to convince me I’ve already done it so I can’t do it again. Fucking arrogant bastard of an Archivist.” Your breath comes faster, edging toward hyperventilation as you get more and more worked up. “I need to -- I can’t find it. I can’t find it!” Your voice gets louder and louder, and Martin trying to calm you down fades into the background as the dull throb of white noise surrounds you. Snow fills your vision like you’re watching an old television set, fills your ears and mouth and nose and lungs and you can’t breathe, you can’t see, can’t hear can’t think can’t move can’t fucking _breathe_ \--

And Martin is there, shaking you roughly by the shoulders, forcing you to look at him. “Tim!” Your name is sharp in his mouth like a knife, and when you make eye contact everything falls away. “Tim, I need you to calm down,” Martin tells you.

“I am calm,” you croak out, even while you’re still shuddering and lightheaded and the snow is still fading from your sight. “I’m calm.”

“You’re not,” Martin says. “Tim. Look at me.”

You do, and he looks like he’s glowing from the way he’s framed by the lighting, and he’s fucking pretty and you miss Jon and you miss kissing Jon and you miss falling asleep to the steady sound of Jon’s heartbeat. You turn your face up toward Martin, like he can bestow some blessing on you, on your knees like a supplicant in Christian paintings.

“I’m real,” he tells you. “I swear, Tim, I’m really here and you’re not dreaming. You -- you did it, you stopped the ritual, and --” his gaze flicks to Jon, lying insensate on the bed “-- you’re a hero.” The last is said with a twist to his mouth that you don’t like at all, but you don’t have the brainpower to say anything coherent about it.

“Martin,” you say, and as you reach up to touch his hair you realize your hands are shaking. You don’t know what you’re asking for, or even whether it’s something Martin can give you, but he understands anyway, tipping his chin down so you can grab a fistful of his curls, and he holds you while you sob. It’s an ugly crying, snot and tears and blind panic, but he holds you through it anyway. He doesn’t talk, for which you’re pathetically grateful, but he’s warm and solid and _real_ and that’s the important bit.

You come down from it to the vague awareness that your knees hurt. Kneeling on the floor for long periods of time doesn’t seem to be any better for you now than it ever was when you were still a person. Martin must be in pain too, but he doesn’t complain. You’ve been pulling on his hair, but he’s still breathing slow and steady, providing you a rhythm to match when you’re ready. 

“Sorry,” you say, roughly wiping your eyes with heavy pressure from the heel of your hand. Letting go of his hair is harder than you thought it would be. You don’t want to give up the physical contact, but you know if you were in Martin’s place you’d be exhausted and irritable and wanting to go home. 

Martin’s not you, though. “Do you want to come home with me?” he asks.

“I. Uh, _yes_?” You stutter over your answer, but this is the most sure you’ve felt since you stopped being a person. And you can justify this selfishness by using it as an excuse to pump Martin for info on the situation at the Institute.

“Come on, then,” he says, considerably more brusque than he’d been before. You know him well enough to recognize the embarrassment, but it doesn’t make you smile like it might have once. He beckons you to follow, and you trail after him as he leaves the hospital and heads to the bus.

You stand on the ride there, leaning against a pole in a studiously casual pose. You’re not keen on having someone sit on you (in you?) when the seat next to Martin appears to be empty. He’s casual about getting you off the bus and up to his flat, but as soon as he’s finished fumbling with his keys in the lock he’s all nervous energy. 

“Do you eat?” he asks, with an earnest intensity that almost makes you sick. 

“No,” you answer curtly. You’re not a fucking _specimen_ to be examined. But Martin’s curiosity is understandable, so you grudgingly accept the glass of water when he offers it. A peace offering, of sorts, one that you’re happy to extend in exchange for being able to interact with anyone at all.

He cooks himself a boxed dinner, microwaved on high for not long enough, and curls up in a tired old armchair. You sit on the footrest, a square padded thing as ancient as the chair and twice as patched, and you search for something to say.

What comes out is a pitiful little squeak and the words, “Let me stay?”

You immediately cringe at yourself. It’s fucking infuriating to be searching for the anger inside yourself as a stabilizer -- and you definitely do see the irony in that the absence of anger itself is making you angry -- and to have it slip through your fingers again and again and end up in despair or sadness instead.

Martin frowns briefly, but he hides it quickly. “Did you -- you don’t have anywhere to be, do you?” he asks.

You hate how he’s pitying you. You hate how you’re so pathetic. You hate that you’re so lost and adrift. You hate yourself for falling apart, hate Martin for _not_ falling apart, hate Jon for becoming the Archivist and not being Jon anymore. But there’s no way for you to properly express it, so you just hug your knees to your chest like you’re eight years old again and try not to lean into Martin’s touch.

You’re not doing a great job of it, apparently, because he finishes eating and tugs on your arm to bring you closer. You go willingly, so fucking greedy for human contact that you don’t mind looking like a fool. Martin doesn’t say anything about it, but he wraps his arms around you and you think maybe that he’s also been so starved for touch that he didn’t even realize how much he needed it.

“We should go to bed,” you tell him, voice muffled. You’re half hoping that he’ll invite you to sleep next to him, and half disgusted with yourself for being so needy. 

He nods, says, “I suppose,” and then when you disentangle yourself from him long enough for both of you to stand up, he starts pushing you toward his bedroom.

You go to turn around, but he stops you, holds you facing him. You look at him -- eyes wide, mouth slightly open, and he leans in, and then he’s kissing you.

He’s kissing you and you’re kissing him and it’s messy and desperate and needy and he’s warm and solid and clinging to you and everything goes away for a long moment before he pulls back. He’s red in the face, flush spreading down his neck, and he stammers, “I -- I, sorry? Tim, this --”

“Shut up,” you say, and grab his shirt to pull him in for another kiss. 

You can feel your own cheeks burning with embarrassment, but that’s apparently enough for Martin to steer you the rest of the way into his bedroom. Nearly tripping over your own feet in your haste to keep touching him, you fall backwards onto the bed, and he sits down beside you. 

Your hands hover over his shirt collar. “Yes?” you ask, just in case.

“Yes,” Martin confirms, and starts undoing the buttons from the bottom up while you work top down. Your own tee shirt comes off sometime between fumbling with his belt and getting your shoes off, and then you’re skin-to-skin, warm against the cool sheets. He’s getting his trousers off, and you’re out of your jeans, and then you’re kissing again.

“I’m not having sex with you if you’re wearing socks,” you tell him, breaking away briefly. 

He laughs against your mouth, a quick, breathy thing, and takes a hand off your back to pull off his socks. While he’s distracted with that, you slip a hand under his boxers, and freeze when he goes tense.

“Martin?” you say.

He relaxes when he sees your concern is for him and not anything worse. “I’m sure you’ve had sex with trans men before,” he says, with only a slight tremor in his voice. 

You nod. “Sure, but I haven’t had sex with _you_ before.”

That makes him smile. “I guess,” he says with a self-deprecating chuckle. “I just -- you know?”

You nod again, even though you’re a cis dude and you really don’t know. This isn’t about gender, this is about being touch-starved and needing contact and having sex with someone you care about. “How do you feel about fingers?”

“Front hole is fine,” he says, “not back. And, but I don’t have condoms? Um. Does it matter?”

“I don’t fucking know, Martin, I haven’t had sex with anyone in a while even before I d-died,” you say, tripping over the last word just a bit. “I don’t know how this works.”

He grins suddenly, wicked sharp. “Get on your knees. You can suck me off without a condom.”

You realize just how fucking hard you are when you drop to the floor, and slide a hand into your briefs to get some friction on your dick. “Shit, Martin,” you say, and then you lean forward to put your mouth between his legs.

You’re mouthing at him over the boxers for a minute before he grabs your hair to pull you away long enough to get the boxers off. “Go on,” he tells you, loosening his grip to something more gentle. “And then I’ll blow you, if you want.”

Martin being so frank about sex acts is surprising, if you’re being honest. You’d imagined he’d be more embarrassed in bed, but he’s confident and sure of himself, almost more than you are. It’s fucking hot, you have to admit, and the hands in your hair certainly don’t help your erection go away. 

“Are you going to suck my dick or not, Tim?” he asks, a tiny bit nervous when you just stay there, looking at him.

You shake yourself out of thinking and get your mouth on him. His front hole isn’t as wet as you’d hoped, but his dick is hard and so you start there. You like giving oral -- it’s a point of pride, that you can figure out how to get your partners squirming -- so it’s fucking good to be doing this for Martin. 

You suck him into your mouth. Your tongue flicks over the head of his cock, drawing a sharp hiss from him. It’s hard to smile with a dick in your mouth, so you pull back to get a deep breath before you start really getting him off. By the time you’ve had to sit back on your heels, his front hole is wet enough to coat your chin in slick.

Martin pulls your hair, tugs your head back to expose your throat. Your breathing is just a touch ragged, and you can feel your eyes slipping closed as you let him manhandle you. It’s good. It’s fucking good, because you can let Martin think for the both of you, and you can be reasonably sure it’s not just something manipulating you -- no matter how good you are at oral, you can’t see how you sucking Martin off will benefit the Lonely, or the Eye, for that matter.

He runs a hand roughly through your hair, then pulls you up to kiss you again, tongue pushing into your mouth as you melt under his hands. “Tim,” he says, still calm and collected despite the urgency of his kisses, “I’m going to suck you off.”

“Okay,” you tell him. You’re slipping into subspace, soft and pliant under Martin’s control, and you didn’t realize how much you’d missed belonging to someone by choice rather than force. Martin sets you up on the bed, pushing your knees apart with his own, and kisses you again. A strand of his hair falls into your face, and the sheer intimacy of it makes your chest ache.

“You need to stop, you say red, okay?” Martin asks you, gentle but firm. You nod, words lost in his eyes. He smiles down at you, then pins your hands to the bed, wrists crossed above your head. “Stay here. Keep your hands here.”

You lick your lips, breath coming faster, and then Martin’s got his mouth on your cock, and it’s all you can do to obey. You want to get hands in his hair, want to hold on and touch him and kiss him, but Martin has told you what to do, and you want to be good for him. “Martin,” you whimper, because he hasn’t forbidden speech. “Martin, please.”

His teeth scrape just a bit over your dick, a gentle admonishment. You bite your lip in response, trying to stifle your helpless needy sounds. But he keeps sucking your dick, and it’s nice to be here and feel safer than you’ve felt in months, and all too soon you’re arching your back and spilling into his mouth.

“Sorry,” you gasp, as you come down from the orgasm high and start shaking. “Sorry, should’ve warned you.”

“It’s okay,” Martin says. He’s smiling at you, and the light frames him again like a halo, and you think that he’s never looked more handsome. He lays down next to you, throws an arm over your chest, and presses close. “If you don’t want to stay, you don’t have to,” he says, muffled by the bedsheet and your shoulder. 

“I want to,” you say, because you don’t want to stop touching Martin.

He hums contentedly, tangling his legs with yours, and you slowly drift toward sleep, warm and comfortable in Martin’s bed and Martin’s arms.

Martin’s hands on your back are pressing into your shoulders, holding you close and still. His hands are broad and warm and solid, comforting in strength, so you sink into his bed -- into him, into the memory of Jon, into the memory of Sasha. 

In the dream, for once you’re able to think of Sasha as you’d seen the real her: tall, curly hair, dark eyes, nose scrunched up as she laughs over a cup of coffee. Her laugh is loud and genuine and you can’t help smiling back at her. You remember this is the memory where you’d first realized you loved her. You still love her, but even the thought of her name usually makes your heart ache.

In the dream, you’re sitting with Jon -- not the Archivist, not the head archivist of the Magnus Institute, with _Jon_. You remember this night, when you’d invited him out for a drink and the two of you had ended the night asleep together on your couch with the box set of Fast & Furious movies in front of you. It’s a good dream, if bittersweet -- you and Jon were different people a couple years ago, and maybe part of the way your relationship soured was because of how close you’d been before. You miss the person Jon used to be, but even now you can’t tell when exactly it was that he’d ceased to be the person you’d loved.

In the dream, Martin stands in front of the sun. It’s a cinematic shot, his silhouette framed by the corona of light (angelic, like you’d seen him for a brief moment in Jon’s hospital room) and seemingly swelling with power. You know this isn’t a memory, but you don’t know if it’s a future or something your fucked up brain is using to send you a message. But either way, you sit there and watch as Martin looks into your eyes, then turns around, very deliberately, and walks into the sun.

You stare after the Martin-sun until your eyes burn. When you close them, you see Sasha again, tucking a loose bit of hair behind her ear, and when you open them again Martin is completely gone. You stand up, reaching out, but it’s Jon’s hands that stop you, as he gently turns you around.

At your back is your own sun. It’s not a doorway; you’ve had enough of that shit with the Distortion. But you find yourself drawn in as if by gravity. It’s a peaceful feeling, rather than a violent one: you know you could resist if you wanted to, and whatever this is wouldn’t present you this choice again. But you feel strangely light on your feet as you walk toward the sun, and for some reason this one doesn’t hurt your eyes.

Sasha takes your hand as you step forward.

Martin’s going to wake up alone in bed. You know, somehow, that he’ll understand what he’s done for you, and you let go.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to my partner for a quick beta read and also for talking me through the ending.


End file.
